The Supreme Court is fond of saying that" the right to exclude others" is" one of the most essential sticks in the bundle of rights that are commonly characterized as property."'I shall argue in this Essay that the right to exclude others is more than just" one of the most essential" constituents of property-it is the sine qua non. Give someone the right to exclude others from a valued resource, ie, a resource that is scarce relative to the human demand for it, and you give them property. Deny someone the exclusion right and they do not have property.

Of course, those who are given the right to exclude others from a valued resource typically also are given other rights with respect to the resource-such as the rights to consume it, to transfigure it, to transfer it, to bequeath or devise it, to pledge it as collateral, to subdivide it into smaller interests, and so forth. These other rights are obviously valuable and important, and it is not improper to speak of